Epic poetry
The term epic is used to describe a broadly defined genre of poetry, which retells in a continuous narrative the life and works of a heroic person or group of heroic persons either historical or mythic. The Iliad and Odyssey are often named as representative examples.
Notable epic poems, in chronological order:
- 19th century BC: The Ramayana (Hindu mythology)
- 1316 BC: The Mahabharata (of which the Bhagavad Gita is a section) (Hindu mythology)
- 8th century BC: The Iliad by Homer (Greek mythology)
- 8th century BC: The Odyssey by Homer (Greek mythology)
- 7th century BC: The Epic of Gilgamesh (Sumerian mythology)
- 1st century BC: Aeneid by Vergil
- 9th century: Beowulf (Anglo-Saxon mythology)
- 11th century: Le Chanson de Roland (The Song of Roland)
- 13th century: Edda (Norse mythology)
- 13th century: Nibelungenlied (Germanic mythology)
- 14th century: La Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy) by Dante Alighieri
- 1516: Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto
- 1596: The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser
- 17th century: Paradise Lost by John Milton
- 1830s: Kalevala
- 1910s: The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien (fictive mythology of Middle-earth)